


Imitation

by she_who_the_river_could_not_hold



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alien horror, Alternate Universe - Horror, Alternate Universe - Science Fiction, Alternate Universe - The Thing (1982), Angst, Body Horror, Depictions of Death, Emori and Murphy aren't together in this, F/M, Gen, Happy Halloween!, but she has a big old crush on him!! and he's crushing too!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-20
Updated: 2020-10-20
Packaged: 2021-03-09 06:20:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,042
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27119461
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/she_who_the_river_could_not_hold/pseuds/she_who_the_river_could_not_hold
Summary: In a remote research station on the planet Nakara, Emori is just starting to get into a rhythm with her work when things take a turn for the worse. It starts off with a dog bite but it leads into a desperate race to survive, as the infection spreads and it turns out that her fellow teammates aren’t all who they appear to be. The race against time will involve keeping emotions and personal feelings in check while trying to stop the creatures from picking them all off one by one.
Relationships: Emori/John Murphy (The 100)
Comments: 10
Kudos: 10
Collections: Chopped Choice: Horror





	Imitation

**Author's Note:**

> Happy Halloween and the Chopped: Horror round! This fic is directly inspired by John Carpenter’s _The Thing_ (1982) –– aka one of the greatest horror movies out there. Which also inadvertently makes this inspired by everyone’s new favorite viral video game, Among Us, which definitely matches the energy from the movie, as well as clearly is inspired by it for one of the maps! 
> 
> For this challenge I stuck with “Horror” as my theme and selected these four tropes:
> 
>   1. Someone is is a shapeshifter and the other characters/readers can’t be sure who
>   2. Dead Communication Device
>   3. Final Girl
>   4. Poorly Timed Confession
> 

> 
> While I’ve made sure to tag it, I do want to reiterate that there is definitely a lot of character death in this fic (only way you can get a “final” girl sadly). While not every death is shown, a handful of them are and I did use fairly graphic depictions of body horror to describe them and I wanted to put this warning as well just in case so that you can prepare yourself. If you’ve seen the movie, I tried to be fairly in line with its visuals.
> 
> On that note lol, happy reading!
> 
> _The alternative title to this is “Stop Acting Sus.”_
> 
> ▸ This fic was voted **2nd Place** for Use of Theme – Horror!

Emori had known the risks of taking this job when she’d sent in her application. Otan had scoffed at her. He’d laughed at the idea that not only was she okay with being a mechanic’s assistant, but that she was willing to freeze her ass off on the ice planet Nakara. 

Well, a job was a job and Emori wasn’t picky.

Not when everyone else had taken one look at her –– a girl with no formal education past high school and from a bad area with a radiation-caused deformity on her hand –– and laughed her out the door.

Eligius had happily accepted her though. The woman in charge of the expeditions, an intimidating woman named Diyoza, had been seemingly impressed with Emori’s interview and welcomed her to the team. But it was with one exception: she had to go to Nakara. She hadn’t known anything about the planet but once she’d arrived there, she got why this was the research station that was filled with mandatory positions after being turned down so much. It was an icy, frozen planet that was completely desolate. But the part of Earth she was from was also desolate and there was an odd solace to it for her.

It was certainly a shitty planet to get assigned to, but Emori’s thankfulness outweighed the risks of being a mechanic on a deep-space research station. She understood the risks but was excited to be able to bond with the team she was with and to get to prove herself.

She just never could have foreseen what happened only a month into being stationed there.

* * *

The storm coming that night was the worst one Emori had seen. 

She’d experienced some small ones since she’d arrived, but most days were just dark and cold. It usually didn’t matter either, not with the lack of windows in the station, save for a few of the doors. But this storm was heavy and unrelenting, echoing throughout empty rooms and disrupting conversations. It had begun last night and Emori had spent most of the night tossing and turning, even now biting back a yawn as she fought to stay focused.

Though the task at hand was luckily almost busy work to be fair, so her utmost attention wasn’t required.

She was currently helping fix some wires in the lab with Raven, the mechanical technician she worked under here on Nakara. She’d been nervous to work under the fierce woman, she’d heard of her while getting set up at Eligius. She was the youngest zero-G mechanic that had ever been hired and Emori hadn’t been able to figure out what she was doing on Nakara of all planets. But within the first time meeting her, Emori had noticed the leg brace and the two women recognized in each other similar lost experiences based on things outside of their control.

Most of the time Raven was an intense instructor but still always confident in Emori’s abilities. Usually they spent most of the day working intensely, sending Emori to bed in an exhausted state. But tonight was different. 

“Do you think Vinson will be okay?” Emori hoped she wasn’t being annoying, but with the impending storm coming in she was doing the best she could to distract herself from the way the wind was beating against the structure, rattling her chest and heightening her nerves.

Raven shrugged, finally pausing in her work to look at Emori.

“I imagine so, Jackson and Harper are good though I guess I’m not 100% sure. Picasso got him pretty good. But it is just a dog bite so it should be fine,” she replied. She seemed confident enough though that Emori’s shoulders relaxed.

“Any word from Shaw yet?” Emori asked, looking over at Raven quickly before focusing back on the wires in front of her.

Shaw, the base camp’s pilot, had taken a shuttle earlier that morning to head to Sanctum to pick up more equipment. Emori had overheard Raven and him arguing about the risk he was taking by going during an early storm swell, but he’d pushed back on the urgency of updated equipment for the upcoming cave excavations the team had planned. In the end, it was the first argument she’d seen her supervisor lose.

“Nope.” Raven’s tone was sharp, the ‘p’ at the end of the word coming out with a staccato pop. 

Emori waited a moment before saying, “Well I’m sure we’ll hear from him soon.”

She knew without it being said that Raven’s tension was a result of her actually being worried –– despite how she was letting on. Emori had seen the two of them interact. Even if they weren’t anything official or serious, they had a connection that had touched her. Seeing people like that, couple or not, celebrate each other’s intellect while also pushing each other made her think that was along the lines of what she hoped she could find one day in a romantic partner. 

Whether or not Raven believed her was entirely up for debate, but Emori didn’t get a chance to find out. 

Yelling echoed down the hallway, bouncing off the walls to them. Multiple shouts and a clatter followed. With just a momentary glance at each other, the two young women grabbed their tools and immediately sprinted off. It took them only a moment for them to reach the source of the sound: med bay.

Raven swung the door open, accompanied by a  _ “What the fuck is going on??” _

That felt like an understatement. The place was a mess, Harper was on the ground to the side, Vinson on the lone operating table in the center, and Jackson thrashing about in the back.

“It’s Vinson!” Jackson yelled before hoisting the oxygen tank above his head and crashing it into the floor behind the operating table. “I couldn’t get to her in time!”

Before Emori could ask what the hell that meant, she heard Raven suck in her breath beside her. “Oh shit… Harper.”

Emori’s head followed Raven’s, her eyes moving to where Harper was collapsed on the ground. But then as her eyes adjusted to what she was looking at, horror took hold of her. 

Her original input of the scene was wrong. Harper wasn’t just collapsed. Her long mousey-blonde hair was strewn out around her almost like a halo. But while the twisted angle of her legs had initially made it look like she was simply passed out, a longer glance showed the shocking reality. Emori’s eyes traced up from Harper’s boots up towards her torso where blood was pooled on the metal ground beneath. Her arms almost looked like they were tucked under her until it became apparent that she just… didn’t have forearms anymore. It was impossible to conceptualize how it had happened but they almost looked bitten off. Ragged pieces of skin revealed broken pieces of bone and Emori couldn’t believe she held back the instinct to throw up. 

“She’s already dead. Vinson was too quick.”

Jackson’s words came out dully and when Emori looked over at him in shock, his face was contorted with sadness as he walked towards them. Once she’d seen the details of Harper’s body, there hadn’t been any question of whether or not she was alive –– but hearing Jackson say it somehow still made it worse.

More and more felt wrong about this situation.

The problem was ultimately that Jackson had referred to Vinson while he’d been behind the table, but from where Emori was standing she could still see Vinson’s body on the operating table.

What was missing was his head.

She didn’t have a chance to process that right away though. Not while she was busy taking in the sight in front of her. It was a far cry from the quiet chef she was used to. Though Emori had always felt like there was an unsettling nature to the man who helped prepare food for the team, she’d never been able to place her finger on it. That seemed like a distant memory though as she looked at the body in front of her… if that was what you could consider it still. His stomach was ripped open, skin ragged and ripped along the edges. On the flaps of the skin, a pale green slimy substance was webbed from tear to tear as it mixed in with his blood. And most frighteningly of all: thick, corded spider-like limbs protruding out of his stomach that reached for the ceiling. The same slime dripped from them back down towards the stomach and then… the realization that Vinson’s head was missing.

Emori did her best to hold herself back from retching. She had to hold herself together.

“What the hell happened here?!” Raven demanded, her hand covering her mouth as she looked away from the body and to Jackson, agony and fiery rage rampant on her face.

“It’s a long story,” he replied. 

_ As if that wasn’t fucking obvious. _

Raven gulped at that, her eyes darting to the two bodies and then back to Jackson and Emori. “We need to figure out a game plan.”

“Not––not here. Let’s discuss this elsewhere. We need the others too,” Emori responded, her voice louder than she expected it to be. Probably from the fear racing through her. Jackson and Raven looked positively ill and someone had to make a decision. Luckily they were both capable of nodding, so the three of them made their way back out of the med bay. 

Once back in the hall, Emori felt at a bit of a loss of where to go until Raven pointed to the south, commenting that she was pretty sure some of the rest of the crew was in the rec room.

She was right and they opened the door to the room to see Monty and Murphy sitting on the couches, watching a rerun of a soccer game. 

Emori immediately felt two warring emotions. 

Monty was Harper’s fiancé. They’d been engaged for years, just waiting for the right moment to make it official (something neither of them had felt compelled to rush). They’d enjoyed working so much that they just kept doing it, going from station to station to help where needed. Monty was their biologist and Harper had been a nurse. Seeing him sitting there on the couch, unaware of what had transpired, was gun-wrenching.

The second emotion she couldn’t help as her eyes landed on John Murphy, the base camp’s communications officer. Loud and a jokester, he was the one who kept morale high at the station. It didn’t hurt that Emori found him ridiculously good looking. He always had a smirk on his face and then a special smile he reserved for her. She always told herself it didn’t mean anything, but her heart still fluttered when he smiled at her as they walked in.

Oh how she wished she was coming in with any other news than what they were about to tell them.

“You guys good? Thought we heard a racket in there,” Murphy quipped, twisting himself on the couch to look at all of them. “Vinson giving you guys any trouble?”

None of them answered right away and it was Monty who picked up on the details first. The slime and blood that was covering Jackson. 

And the two missing people.

“Where’s Harper?”

Monty leapt to his feet, his earlier jovial expression nowhere to be seen. He made a start to run out of the room but Raven and Emori quickly jumped in front of him. He couldn’t go see what had happened without a warning.

“Monty, please. Sit down.” Jackson’s command was soft as he tried to stop his voice from shaking. The panic was clear in Monty’s eyes but he listened to the medic, shakily sitting back down next to Murphy whose own expression had turned dour. 

Emori listened as Jackson filled the two others in on what had led up to what she and Raven had stumbled in on. It had been a simple procedure, Harper was just going to stitch up where Picasso had bitten him on the arm. What should have been a quick set of stitches turned into cardiac arrest. Acting as all of her training had taught her, Harper had launched into attempting to defibrillate him –– only for his stomach to crack open suddenly. 

The description Jackson gave was brief. It was a summed up version of how the vine-like structures had burst out of Vinson’s body and snapped onto Harper’s arms, almost eating them. He didn’t go into depth about it but Emori had seen it and she closed her eyes at his words, only to open them again when she couldn’t escape the visual she had seen in the medbay. 

The conclusion of Jackson’s story was the part she hadn’t been able to piece together. The answer to why Vinson’s head was missing and what Jackson had been doing when she and Raven had entered the room.

He’d been able to lunge forward and inject a sedative into Vinson’s body, an overdose of one he admitted. But his attempt to get to Harper then was thwarted by something that made him pause, his face tinged green as he recounted how he’d heard a noise he’d never heard before and looked up to see Vinson’s head disconnecting from the body. Stretching and ripping away with leg-like structures protruding from the neck. At Jackson’s words, even Murphy had to look away as he let out a shaky exhale. That had been what he’d been doing when the two girls had entered into the medbay. Smashing the creature that had transformed Vinson’s head into some type of creature.

The room echoed with silence as Jackson finished his story. 

Emori was thankful it had been a while since she’d eaten.

“So,” Raven began cautiously, “what the hell do we do now?”

“Well, we have to figure out what caused it. I know we assumed Picasso had gotten into one of the samples from the caves and that caused his heart failure after biting Vinson. But I highly doubt Vinson was going around eating samples.”

“Wait. Vinson was  _ bitten _ by Picasso though right? So what if that has something to do with it?” Emori interjected, her brain spinning from shock to problem solving.

Monty slowly nodded. “It could be. The autopsy I did on Picasso revealed abnormalities I found in Picasso were like nothing I’ve ever seen before.”

“And whatever it was,” Raven continued, “infected him and caused… well, caused whatever that was.”

“Are you saying it’s fucking aliens?” Murphy interrupted as he let out a laugh. “You’re losing your mind.”

“Not in the little green men type of variety,” Monty interjected quickly. “Think more parasitic.”

“But wouldn’t we have noticed that something was wrong with him?” Emori asked hesitantly. She was the newest member of the team and she still sometimes felt out of place with the way they all spoke so comfortably about all of this. Of course Monty did, he was the biologist on the team. But each of them had a better understanding of all of this than she did and she tried to not let it get to her.

The sadness that was cloaking Monty lifted only for a moment as his face screwed up in concentration.

“I’m sure I could come up with some sort of test. It had to have gotten into Vinson’s system.”

Monty’s plan was relatively simple. 

First, they’d draw a little bit of everyone’s blood. Monty’s studies from the glacial caves around the camp had led to some studies about how their bodies worked. The species here had adapted to the frigid temperatures and whereas all of the humans here had to wear helmets on the outside, the creatures’ bodies had changed. It was only a hunch, but Monty theorized that if the thing that had bitten Picasso had infected it –– and then therefore infecting Vinson –– then it was a living organism that was getting passed along and he suspected it was in the blood. Like any virus, it would do anything to survive. And that was where it got more experimental because Monty believed that if that was true, then a hot wire would cause the blood to react in order to protect itself. Normal blood would simply sit there.

It sounded crazy. And if Emori herself hadn’t seen the damage done in medbay, she would have had an impossible time believing it would work. But at this point, anything was possible.

Everyone was silent for a moment as Monty’s explanation sank in. 

Murphy cracked his neck. “Okay then. So let’s figure out where the hell the others are and get this shit figured out.”

Monty looked around them, his shoulders sagging back down again.

“I’ll help get the test going. Then once I prove I’m safe, I’m going to take care of Harper. It’s my responsibility… all of it.” 

Monty’s words hung in the room as they quickly located the rest of the station’s crew, radioing each of them to meet up in the rec room. His guilt was misplaced, but Emori could see how he’d made the reach. He’d been the one to convince Harper to join him on Nakara and he must have thought since he’d checked out Picasso, that he somehow should have seen this coming.

The first to appear was a woman named Nikki. Tall and broadly built thanks to years of what appeared to be dedicated working out, the field dive officer was one of the few people Emori hadn’t been able to grow close to yet. It wasn’t that she was older than some of the rest of them, but her humor was abrasive and she reminded Emori too much of some of the rough women from her childhood. 

Second was a man Emori really only knew by his last name: McCreary. As the Station General Assistant, he primarily worked with the day to day activities around the base. Emori didn’t have much reason to interact with him and for that she was thankful. Him and Vinson had apparently been at Eligius for years and their unlikability had scared her off from trying to learn from them. Raven had only supported her thoughts, often muttering her own pointed remarks about the greasy-haired man who stalked through the halls with a permanent leer on his face. 

Rounding out the crew, of at least who was still alive or not gone like Shaw, was Echo. Emori immediately relaxed at the sight of her. She’d originally mistaken the young woman’s dry sense of humor for disinterest, but now she was one of her closest friends at the base. Statuesque and in another life probably could have been a model, Echo was a top notch field guide who had been a huge part of Emori being able to settle in.

Once everyone was seated in a circle, Monty and Jackson took turns re-explaining the situation at hand. People’s reactions ranged from quietly processing with Echo to outright amusement with Nikki. 

“You’re joking right?” The older woman let out a bray of laughter. “You expect me to believe this shit? Aliens?”

“Why would they lie about this?” Echo snapped back at her.

“It’s just asking for a bit of blood,” followed up Raven, her eyes narrowed at Nikki. The two of them always seemed to be at odds with each other, not that Emori could figure out why, but this was certainly going to only add fuel to the fire.

“This is bullshit,” McCreary muttered under his breath. 

Beside the group of them, Monty continued to prep for them to test the blood. If he was bothered by the pushback from the others, he didn’t show it. His movements were mechanical as he went through the motions. Jackson looked like he was trying to not hover too much behind him.

“Oh just sit down and do it,” Echo said with a huff. “If you don’t believe it or have nothing to hide then there’s no reason you can’t take the test. Or are you scared of a little blood?”

The challenge in her eyes was equally met by McCreary, but he didn’t have a good response. Once he sat down, Nikki rolled her eyes and dropped into the seat next to him, her legs splayed out in forced casualness. It was some type of an attempt at a power move, Emori supposed. 

McCreary watched Monty’s movements like a hawk. But when he pulled the needle and the small blowtorch out, the man’s already short lived patience expired. 

“Okay you know what, FUCK that.” 

McCreary pushed him out of the chair so quickly that it took everyone a moment to realize what was happening. He seemed to swell up in anger, filling the room.

“I’m out of here, you’re not getting that shit anywhere close to me,” he swore. Then before anyone could interject, he shoved his way past Jackson and into the hallway. The pounding of his boots echoed through the hall as they listened to him hurry away.

“That’s not suspicious at all,” Raven drily remarked. 

At the same time, Jackson quickly looked around at them and gave an affirmative nod. “I’ll go chase him down. We’ll get a test out of him today, I promise.”

With the promise made, the lanky doctor then hurried his way out into the hallway to chase their teammate. Everyone else glanced at each other before they all looked back at Monty.

“Here we go,” he said quietly, almost more to himself than anyone else in the room. 

Everyone anxiously leaned forward.

He finished heating the revealed copper wire and passed along the lighter to Murphy, who clutched it tightly. It was the closest he was getting to revealing how anxious he was. Monty then looked down at the petri dish, where the tiny pool of blood was, and dipped the wire into it.

There was an instant sizzle as the blood burned, but with a hiss of steam, that was it. Nothing had happened.

“Oh thank god,” Emori exhaled, leaning back and catching Monty’s small, melancholy smile. 

“You’re clear then, if you want to get Harper,” Raven said softly. She reached forward and gently placed her hand on his knee, which he squeezed back in response before slowly standing up.

He let out a cough. “I won’t be too long. She just… she deserves a proper burial.” The guilt laden in his voice was painful and the reminder that the woman who personified the sun, even on this ice planet, was really gone. 

Emori gulped and gave a half-wave as Monty nodded at everyone before making his way out of the room. She watched as he reached the doorframe and his shoulders slumped even further. Her heart broke.

“Well, no reason to waste any time,” Raven said gruffly, looking back at everyone. “Let’s carry on with the test.”

Echo volunteered to start next. She rolled her shoulder back as she sat still for Raven, the small bubble of blood pooling on her finger tip before dripping into the petri dish in Raven’s outstretched hand.

A similar beat of silence as Emori reheated the wire and Raven then moved it to touch the blood.

Just like with Monty’s a fizzle and then nothing.

There was, of course, the potential that the test was going to fail across the board. But at least now they were two for two. 

Nikki was squirming as she watched and when Emori turned with the pocket knife in front of her to get the blood sample, her mouth twisted.

“I think you’re all lying.” Nikki’s eyes flashed. “You’re all full of shit and you’re hiding something.”

“Take the damn test, Nikki. You’re the one that’s freaking out for no reason, just like McCreary.” Raven’s glare could cut through glass as the two women faced off with each other. 

Before Nikki could do anything else, Echo gripped the older woman’s arm to hold her steady and Murphy quickly followed suit, Emori joining as well. She struggled against them but Raven was faster. The prick was over before Nikki could completely wrench herself free. Once they had what they needed though, they let go of her.

Raven placed the wire on the blood.

While the other points of contact had resulted in a brief sizzle of the blood being burned against the petri dish, this one somehow managed to sound like a scream.

Emori’s hands flew to her ears and winced, watching in horror as the blood expanded and bubbled up, almost bursting out of the dish like a balloon. 

Raven dropped the dish and everyone backed away, too stunned to move as the blood splattered on the ground before congealing again into one puddle of blood. Then in another unexpected moment, it seemed to move on its own accord and raced towards Nikki. Everyone’s eyes quickly tracked it up to where it had made its way up Nikki’s leg. Before they could do anything, she let out a roar and shoved past them, pushing Murphy to the ground and taking off. 

As she’d turned, Emori had gotten a quick look at her face. She could have sworn the whites of her eyes had gone solid black and the tongue that appeared as she panted was much too long for a human. 

But she couldn’t focus on that, rushing forward to help Murphy up. He let out a groan but stabled beside her as she held onto him. 

She wished being this close to him, holding his arm, could have been in any other circumstance. 

“Come on, let’s go!” Echo’s voice broke through Emori’s thoughts and the four of them raced out after Nikki. 

Skidding out into the hall, they all looked around them. There was no one in sight. 

“Jackson! McCreary!”

Echo shook her head at Raven. “Don’t call out to them, we don’t want to attract their attention.”

“Jackson could be in trouble,” retorted Raven, but she glanced nervously around.

There was no response though, her voice’s echo disappearing into the expansive hallway that stretched in front of them.

“So where to?”

Murphy’s question was answered by a loud pop and then all of the power going out, plunging the four of them into darkness.

“You’ve gotta be fucking kidding me,” Emori cursed as she spun around.

It sounded like Raven kicked the wall to the side of her.

“There’s no way this is from the storm,” she grunted. “I bet Nikki or McCreary blew the power.” 

Murphy let out a long breath. “Son of a bitch. They’re going to try and hunt us down.” 

They all looked at each other with apprehension. Emori’s heart felt like it was in her throat. She hadn’t felt fear like this for a long time, not since she and Otan had been able to finally move to a somewhat nicer town. She hadn’t stopped looking over her shoulder for years and it was only recently, living on her own in yet another city, that she’d let the feeling go. Even the isolation of the basecamp hadn’t gotten to her. But now it all came rushing back, instinct kicking in as she felt the hairs on her arms stand up. Her mind was going into overdrive. 

There was a clatter to the side of them and a few moments later, Emori’s nerves caught in her throat, Raven was suddenly illuminated. 

“Flashlights. We’ve kept some spare ones in the rec room for ages, I wasn’t even sure if they’d work,” she said as she passed them out. 

The heavy weight of the light in Emori’s hand gave her some semblance of having a level of protection, as well as a way to see what the hell they were doing. It helped her relax some, but only just.

“So back to my question,” Murphy reiterated, “where to?”

“Anywhere but just standing around. We agree that we need to get Nikki first? How about we just head to the center of the base and then spread out?” Emori asked, sweeping her flashlight back and forth in front of her. The others responded in agreement. 

The walk through the station felt longer than usual. With the lights off and the fear of an attack cloaking them, Emori felt disorientated. 

Which made it all that much more surprising when the movement of her flashlight in front of her crossed over a lain out foot. The beam of light traced upwards, following the boot to a leg that looked twisted in all the wrong ways, moving up to a shirt stained with relatively fresh blood.

Emori jerked her flashlight away but not before she saw the mutilated face of McCreary, staring emptily up at the ceiling. She didn’t need to see the details of this body too.

Gasps echoed around her as it registered with everyone.

“So I guess he’s just an asshole and not some alien thing,” Murphy muttered, his foot tentatively reaching out and moving it with his own. It rolled back and he shuddered. He was a large guy -– it normally would be a difficult feat to take someone his size down. But Emori had seen what Vinson’s body had turned into. McCreary’s had changed but only through death, not infection.

“I suppose so.” Echo let out a long breath, rubbing her hand through her pixie cut anxiously. 

Emori tried to think of the timeline of when Picasso had gotten infected and when Shaw had left. Had he been exposed? Even if he hadn’t been, the way the storm was raging around them only added to her sinking feeling that he wasn’t going to make it. No one was going to be coming that could provide help.

She wasn’t even sure she thought Monty was alive still at this point. There was no way. He for sure would have been back in by now and with Nikki on the loose, there was no doubt that they were all in danger.

Raven swung her flashlight over to a comms device on the wall. “All of the comms are connected, you don’t have to be in the main office to call Headquarters. You just need the extension.”

She jogged just a bit down the hallway and Emori followed, swinging her flashlight ahead of the other woman to see what they were entering into. Luckily, the hall was empty in front of them and Raven reached the comm without anything jumping out at them. Or more dead bodies appearing. The small black box had a speaker as well as a device that fell somewhere between a walkie-talkie and a phone, an invention that Emori hadn’t had any experience with until arriving at Nakara. She hung protectively just behind Raven as the others caught up to them, all on the lookout.

Raven punched a few digits into the buttons beside the speaker, holding the comm tightly in her hand. 

Empty static was all that answered her.

“Shit, they’re all dead.” The comm clanged against the metal wall as Raven dropped it. “Guess they blew out the generator too, not just electricity.”

Emori buried her face in her hands. In her month of being at the station, she’d learned enough about how it was all set up. She knew that the comms were separate from the lights in case of emergencies not so dissimilar to this one. Cases were they would need to reach out to others for help, even with the electricity down. But if the comms were down, that meant the generator outside of the building was down. And that meant there would be no way to call for help. 

“Murphy, with me back to the office. There’s an off-chance we can fix it at least partially from there. Echo and Emori, keep an eye out for Jackson. We’re going to need strength in numbers.” Raven’s commanding nature had made her a good mentor in Emori’s time here and it looked like it might help save their asses during this. 

With the order given, they all launched into action. With a salute, Murphy followed Raven down one path while Echo and Emori went the opposite way. 

They hadn’t gotten too far in their new direction when a noise startled them. Ready to run in a split second, Emori and Echo’s flashlights joined together to reveal a very worn out looking doctor making his way down an adjacent hallway towards them.

“Oh thank god you guys are here,” Jackson said with relief, stumbling towards them as the two of them relaxed at the familiar face. 

“What happened??”

“McCreary –– he turned into one of them. I barely managed to get away, he got distracted by Nikki so I was able to run,” he panted.

“We’re glad you made it,” Emori replied with a reassuring smile. Strength in numbers was going to make all of this easier. Jackson returned her smile with a watery one of his own.

“Quick, let’s check out this room. If we can clear it of her and get any useful supplies it’ll be easier to move along.” Echo gestured further down the hallway..

Jackson and Emori followed her into the room. It was a tiny one, Emori was fairly certain it was just for storing lab supplies. But it was better than nothing. A quick scan showed that there weren’t any real hiding spot that a person could fit into in here, relieving some of that tension. Now they just needed to see what they could find. 

Echo stalked around the room first, her footsteps clipped as she moved hastily. Jackson hovered in the center of the room, seemingly waiting for instruction since he didn’t have a flashlight on him. Emori swung her light around, seeing if she could spot anything to point Echo towards. 

Not seeing anything obvious right away, she rotated back to aim it in general in the way that Echo was walking to provide more light. As she did, the beam caught part of Jackson’s frame.

There was blood on the cuff of his jacket. 

And as Emori’s eyes followed the splatter, she realized how much more there was on the back of it. Covering the fabric in a dark stain that had been easy to hide in the dark hallways with only their flashlights guiding them. But in a small room that reflected light more, it was becoming obvious.

“It wasn’t Nikki who killed McCreary,” Emori let out in a rush. Echo’s head whipped towards her. “It was Jackson.”

The medic’s movement stilled as he slowly looked up at them.

“Oh fuck,” Echo breathed out. 

His eyes darting between the two of them, Jackson took the chance and went for Echo first.

Now that they were close up to him, Emori could see how his teeth had transformed into razor ship fangs, reminiscent of something like sharks. They glistened with a saliva that was tinged green -- similar to the slime that had coated Vinson. 

Even infected, Jackson’s initial instincts weren’t quite as ready as Echo’s, who swung at his head with the flashlight in her hand. 

There was a satisfying crunch as she made contact and it gave her just enough time to dart away from him. As Jackson dodged the chair Echo flung at him, Emori spun around looking for anything to help in the room. Luckily on her second glance, she spotted the fire extinguisher in the corner.

Jackson’s earlier actions against Vinson were unfortunately going to show her how to in turn kill him off as well.

As she pried it off the wall, Echo was doing her best to fight him off. Echoing clatter could be heard behind Emori as she listened to the two wrestle with each other. Finally she was able to get it to pop off and she swung back around. Echo was nearly pinned and looked up in revulsion as Jackson’s head tilted back and his jaw began to unhinge, revealing more rows of teeth and a serpent-like tongue.

And then Emori swung the fire extinguisher. 

If the flashlight had sounded satisfying earlier, this was on another level.

Jackson’s body crumpled to the ground, teeth spraying out from the hit. The same green slime splattered as well, getting on both of them as they watched him fall to the ground. 

But Emori had grown up in a rough area and she didn’t wait to examine any more details before slamming it into his face on the ground. 

Never give them the chance to get back up again.

She dropped the now wrecked extinguisher so she could help Echo back into a standing position. The two of them stole a minute to clutch at each other in a tight hug, relieved at both being alive, before quickly hurrying back out of the room and locking it behind them. There wasn’t any time to waste. If Jackson had been infected and they hadn’t realized it right away, then it meant there was no real proof of how to tell if someone was.

“And now?” Echo wiped away a strip of slime and blood from her cheek, looking around them nervously.

“We need to find the others, I don’t think we should be split up anymore.”

Echo nodded at Emori’s words and the two began to take off down the hallway. They hadn’t made it too far when the sound of another pair of footsteps joined theirs echoing through the air, eventually revealing a panicked looking Murphy running towards them. 

Murphy let out a long wheeze once he stumbled to a stop in front of them, clutching at his chest. Agony overwhelmed his features. 

“It’s Raven, Nikki got her.” 

Emori felt like she’d been punched in the face. 

“What do you mean ‘got her,’ John?”

“Why were you two separate?” Echo didn’t bother waiting for him to answer Emori’s question before interjecting with her own. 

“It wasn’t by choice if that’s what you’re asking,” he nearly shouted back, his eyes wild. “She separated us, locked the door. I couldn’t get in and the next thing I know, the door’s unlocked and she’s gone. And Raven’s body is…” He paled and looked away, forcing himself to take slow breaths. 

“Where the fuck did Nikki go then?” Echo hissed. Her composure was still in place but there was a new level of panic to her voice. 

Emori knew Raven and Echo had gone to college together and were close, she couldn’t imagine the restraint she was using to hold herself together. If there hadn’t been the looming threat of Nikki stalking them, Emori would have stopped to do what she could to support Echo but there wasn’t any time.

“I think she’s in the vents,” Murphy responded after a beat, his voice tight with fear. 

Emori’s eyes flicked upwards, as did Murphy’s and Echo’s too.

They fell silent and allowed the sounds of the station to reverberate around them. The wind howled and wailed outside, barely muted by the walls around them. Accented by the storm too, the station itself groaned and creaked with age. Was it settling pipes making that extra noise? Or was it the alien creature that had taken over Nikki’s body that was crawling above them, biding its time before it killed them?

“We can’t dwell on this,” Echo eventually said, her eyes narrowed as she looked around them. Survival instincts would have to override personal emotions to get them through this.

Emori agreed. “There’s no use in waiting for her here.”

They moved quickly and quietly, now down to only two flashlights. It didn’t feel like they had a concrete plan but Emori felt better knowing they were all together.

The sudden turning on of lights startled all three of them. Emori audibly groaned as the flash of light almost blinded her after so long of getting used to moving in the dark with only a flashlight. Her hands instinctively moved up to to block her eyes and she almost ran into Murphy, who had also stopped in surprise.

“Oh shit––” was all he was able to say at the understanding of the lights coming back on before they heard a shrill scream pierce the air from further down.

Nikki had turned the lights back on and was coming for them.

They broke into a sprint. They were on the path back to medbay where it had all started, back to the rec room where they’d tried to test everyone’s blood. The sensation that they were running in circles almost clouded Emori’s mind as she struggled to keep pushing herself forward with the others. She didn’t know she’d had this much strength in her but no doubt she was running on pure adrenaline at this point.

“This way!” Murphy bellowed, pointing at a different direction. He was pointing towards a hallway that led towards the security and admin rooms -- smart. Any advantage they could get.

But it seemed that they weren’t thinking far enough ahead of Nikki.

They’d barely turned the corner when there was a screech of metal and Emori spun around to see the woman dropping out of the ceiling and onto the floor behind them. She snarled and a litany of curse words dropped from all three of their mouths at the sight of what had changed with her. Growing from her stomach, maybe what Vinson’s body had been attempting to do, were a trio of tentacles. Every time Emori thought things had reached their maximum insanity, something else happened.

Beside her, Echo suddenly whipped out a small knife from her pocket, Emori’s jaw dropping. She must have swiped it from the lab on their way out. It was larger than a pocket knife and if it was used for dissections, it must be stronger than it looked.

Echo certainly looked comfortable holding it and for a moment Emori wondered if there was more to her past she didn’t know about. 

“Emori, Murphy –– GO!” Echo shouted, swinging the knife upwards to block against Nikki, who fell backwards to dodge it. “Get the hell out of here! I can distract her.”

Realization of what Echo was saying clicked for Emori and panic set in. 

“I won’t leave you!” She cried out. But her move to get closer to Echo was thwarted by Murphy grabbing her by the waist. 

“Come on, Echo’s right!”

“She’s going to die!” 

Thrashing against his grip, Emori did her best to fight against his hold on her. But with a final nod from Echo, Murphy seemed to pull a strength out of him that belied his frame, and he was able to drag Emori kicking and screaming down the hallway. 

“And if you try to be the hero, you’ll probably die too!” He grunted back. 

At his words, Emori relaxed against him. 

Damn it. She wanted to believe he was wrong, that Echo was wrong to push her away. But she’d seen the way the tentacles lashed out of Nikki’s abdomen, all muscle and slime. It wasn’t really three against one. Not in the slightest and Emori knew their odds were bad. 

So they ran. They ran until the sounds of the fight between the two disappeared behind them and Emori’s lungs felt like they were going to burst out of her chest and her thighs burned. 

Finally, when she couldn’t take it anymore, she reached out and yanked on Murphy’s jacket to get him to stop.

“Wait John,” she wheezed, “wait just a moment. Let’s listen.”

They waited with baited breath, frozen in the center of the hallway. Emori gulped in oxygen, waiting to hear what was going on. A distant cry was the last noise they’d heard, even the station around them falling quiet. 

Emori spun to look at him. “We need to go back.”

“That defeats the entire purpose of us running away from them,” snapped Murphy. It was one of the first times he’d directed his temper towards her and even though she recognized that they were in a tense situation, it still made her own anger flare up.

“Well we need to check something because for all we know, Echo was able to take Nikki out. She might need our help. If that’s the case, we just need to focus on getting out here once the storm is done. We shouldn’t waste running from an enemy who might not even be alive anymore.”

Murphy’s expression grew desperate. 

“Wouldn’t that wouldn’t we hear them? We’re the last two people here. Either Echo comes to join us or Nikki comes to finish us off.” 

Emori swallowed. 

_ Fuck he was probably right _ . 

She hated this. She’d left people behind when she was growing up, she’d sworn to never do it again. Not when this crew had become a family for her. 

But the longer they stood there, the longer the silence dragged on. Neither Nikki or Echo appeared at the end of the hallway.

The only thing that gave Emori solace was that it meant that Echo had taken Nikki out with her. A badass to the very end. It made her wish that somehow they’d been able to arm themselves better before all of this, that they hadn’t approached it from a scientific angle from the get go. But it was too late for that now. Emori would never forget her sacrifice, not as long as she lived.

And in order to do just that, she’d have to listen to Murphy and get out of here.

Rubbing tears out of her eyes, Emori finally nodded. “Fine, let’s go.”

It took all of the strength she had to push off on her feet and begin to run again. It was a lighter jog now but still one nonetheless. She couldn't be trapped in this tomb anymore. After all of this running she was a bit disorientated, but maybe they could find the hangar bay. Flying a shuttle back to Eligius was far from her list of capabilities, and she assumed the same for Murphy, but it was worth the risk. She couldn't be trapped in this tomb anymore. 

As she ran though, she realized that Murphy’s footsteps were fading behind her. Pulling away.

When it became clear that she was the only one running, she slowed to a stop and turned around. She was right: Murphy was standing further down the hall staring at her.

“John! What are you waiting for? We have to go! You said it yourself!”

She didn’t get it. He’d spent so much energy to drag her out of here on Echo’s orders, it was ridiculous that suddenly he was dragging his feet. There wasn’t time for this. But all the same, Emori watched Murphy leisurely walk towards her, putting one foot in front of the other with odd precision.

“I have something to confess,” he said slowly, lifting his gaze to meet hers. “Something I have to get off of my chest.”

Emori blinked rapidly. That wasn’t what she had been expecting him to say. 

“I’m not a priest, John. And I’m sure whatever it is can wait, you can tell me once we get out of here. We have to see if the hangar bay hasn’t been snowed in, maybe we can hotwire one of the shuttles,” she insisted. 

Murphy shook his head. “No, I need to tell you.”

“So tell me then!” Emori didn’t mean to snap at him. But the paranoia was eating at the inside of her and she was losing her patience, even with him. They were surrounded by death and unknown alien exposure, this was hardly the time for a heart to heart moment. 

He stepped closer to her.

“It wasn’t Nikki who killed Raven.”

Emori’s blood ran cold. 

She would have sworn she was falling through the floor if it hadn’t been for how leaden her limbs had become at the words Murphy had uttered. There was a roaring sound crashing in her ears, blending into a frenzied static.

“What?”

The word was thick coming out of her mouth, a struggle. 

She knew what she’d heard, she just wanted to give him a chance to say something different.

But in this lighting of the hallway, the flickering dim lights accented the hollows of his cheeks. But even time in an isolated research station hadn’t made that gaunt, his features that piercing. He was changing, subtly but surely. She briefly wondered when he would have gotten infected. He wasn’t bitten by Picasso, Monty hadn’t seemed to think it was airborne. Maybe it had been the blood in the office. 

But those were all fleeting thoughts, unable to stay put when she was so distraught over the vision of him in front of her. Not quite human anymore. 

As if reading her thoughts, he ducked his head almost shyly.

“The hunger comes in waves. I’m keeping it in check right. I don’t want to scare you too much, not yet. Though I don’t think I’ll get as bad as Vinson sounds like he did.”

The casualness of his voice made Emori shudder and it was enough to jolt her into action.

This wasn’t Murphy in front of her, not anymore. 

Just standing here was a death wish.

Instinct kicked in once again for Emori. As she ran, her feet moved on their own accord. 

At first her goal was just to keep running. Were there weapons on the grounds? Part of her assumed yes, but they were also just a bunch of researchers and mechanics out here for the most part. Maybe she could take the risk and chance running outside to lose him? Though with the way the storm was shrieking outside and the wind beating against the exterior, making it groan and move almost like the caves the dive team described, she had a feeling she’d just die out there. Plus, she had no idea what the radiation levels were today.

It was thought of the radiation that made her almost slow down, her feet nearly tripping up at the.

Maybe there  _ was _ a place she could run to versus running around directionless. 

The decontamination room.

While the radiation levels on Nakara were usually low, no different than Earth’s at this point, sometimes storms or other weather fluctuations could make the levels spike. In the administration room there was a machine that was connected to a monitor that would alert the crew to dramatic changes in the air. If anyone was outside, from getting supplies to returning from an excavation, they had to come through the decontamination room. From there, they’d be sprayed down and placed their uniform in a sealed box for a deeper clean, followed by the airlock vent being released then once the person was back inside. Raven had attempted to explain it to Emori on her first day, how the vent would then remove any radiation that had come in while the person had entered by violently sucking the air out of the room (hence why people needed to exit before you could do it). The mechanics of it had gone over Emori’s head and she was thankful she was never tasked with going outside, keeping her chances of exposure low. 

She’d never used the room before but now it was all she was zeroed in on. Egging Murphy on to follow her towards it.

Part of her assumed he was taking it easy on her. With the way the others had moved, there was no way she had this good of a lead on him. But maybe it was also a game to him and that’s why he was letting her get ahead. 

All the better for her.

She almost slid to a stop, her boots slick against the ground. When she looked down, she realized she had remnants of blood coming off the soles of her shoes. She grimaced at the recollection of being beside McCreary’s body, no doubt the source of it.

Shaking off the distraction, she quickly punched in the code for the room. The heavy door swung open in front of her. As it did, she looked back down at the blood below her and the back at the hallway. Murphy still hadn’t caught up, though she could hear him whistling some damn song she vaguely recognized from when he controlled the music in the evenings. Something about that stung. The way that he could still have that part of him still in him. Doing her best to tune him out, she slowly stepped into the room and made sure to press her feet firmly down to leave behind bloody shoe prints.

When it looked convincing enough, she moved as quickly as she could. She didn’t have any time to waste.

Yanking her boots and socks off and tossing them into a dark corner of the room, she hurried back out into the hallway. Making sure she didn’t mess up the blood, she scurried over to duck behind a supply closet door. If it stayed open, there was no way he’d think to check behind it since she wouldn’t be inside an open closet.

She only ended up having moments to spare as she watched Murphy appear. Sucking in her breath, she watched as he paused at the shoe prints.

It hadn’t crossed her mind until then that his senses might be heightened. Maybe he could smell her fear, maybe he could just smell her. Maybe the sound of her heartbeat was like a steel drum to his ears. 

She didn’t dare close her eyes.

Murphy’s head didn’t turn towards her though. Instead he simply looked up and even with just his profile in view, she could see a smirk grace his face as he followed the steps into the room.

Ultimately she knew she was going to only have one chance to get this right. She’d seen the other bodies, she knew what could happen to her.

It was those thoughts that propelled her forward. 

She was glad she’d thought to take her socks off so that she didn’t slip. Instead, her bare feet gave her traction as she sprinted forward and flung herself at the keypad.

By the time Murphy had figured out her trick, it was too late for him as the door automatically sealed shut.

Emori nearly collapsed in relief, the adrenaline leaving her in a rush as she realized she’d successfully locked him in. The exhaustion from the emotional terror began to pound in her head and she was thankful for the moment’s pause so she could recuperate before she came up with a new plan.

At first, Murphy raged against the metal door.

His fists flew against, striking the door with a ferocity and strength that didn’t match his size. But it was no match for the room that had been prepped for a radiation leak. She could hear him swearing too, swearing on people in his past and swearing on the universe. Parts of his voice had changed, slipping into what she could only assume was the infected version of himself. She’d never thought of the creatures out there in the frozen tundra as aliens, but that seemed like the only answer at this point. She half-listened, the occasional tear leaking onto her cheek as she heard him kick against the wall. She’d slumped against the door, too scared to sit and too tired to stand upright and it felt like every noise he made echoed through her body. 

She knew she had one option now, but she couldn’t help but wait. Even though she knew no one was going to come for a long time with no reason to suspect things had run afoul here at the station, she kept waiting.

Eventually the noises subsided. Even the faint sound of him anxiously pacing slipped away and she wondered if the monster inside him had grown tired too. Maybe it was difficult to stay in control and maintain the shape of the creature it took over. 

It was maybe five or ten minutes once he had fallen silent that Emori was startled out of the stupor she was gradually going into.

“Hey, ‘Mori?”

Murphy’s voice was a little muffled, but it was closer to her now. She knew if she looked up she’d see him in the porthole window in the door. And the way he said his nickname for her, the first nickname she’d ever had that she liked, made her ache to look. To see him looking back at her. 

He sounded more normal than he had earlier. There was an emotion to the way he said her name, in a forlorn way, that sounded different than earlier when he’d described how he’d killed Raven.

It was that thought though that kept her down. Her legs burned from crouching but it was the knowledge of what he’d done that kept her low.

“Yes John?” She responded hoarsely.

“There is still a part of me… that feels human.” 

His voice was small. She was pretty sure she heard the sound of something tapping the glass of the window. 

“That part that’s still human, it still is attracted to you. I just feel like you deserve to know that. I liked you the moment I saw you walk in on your first day.” 

She almost let out a sob at the fact that he remembered her first day there. She’d started just a week after everyone else, nervous that she was going to be the odd one out. He’d taken one look at her and instantly smiled and she’d felt a curious feeling in her, barely recognizing having that type of look directed at her. They hadn’t really talked much that day, not until the next one when she’d agreed with his opinion of the soccer game on TV, but he had taken a glance down at her hand and commented that it was pretty badass. He hadn’t just ignored it, he’d embraced it. The crush had almost been instantaneous, but who could blame her?

Murphy wasn’t done though, his voice curling with longing.

“If we’d never been here, never been on this forsaken, frozen planet, would you have said yes to me? If everything had gotten to be normal?”

Emori’s eyes shut involuntarily, squeezing tightly closed as she imagined a different reality. A world where they’d met on Earth, on any planet other than this one. Away from the ice and body-possessing aliens. Dinners together, long walks together hand-in-hand. Murphy had always made everyone laugh, even Nikki on her bad days. He would have teased her, distracted her from bad days while she worked. 

“Yes,” she breathed out. “I would have said yes.”

“Do you think you could have ever fallen in love with me?”

Murphy’s voice changed. She could hear it even as she swallowed back the images his earlier words had conjured. Because she could hear the hunter coming back into him, doing what he could to draw his prey in. She knew the words were true –– she gave him that much. But she knew him better than she had realized and she heard the tonal shift. Her heart ached with the unlived life they’d never get to have together. She remembered his smirk when he’d first sat down beside her in the mess hall for lunch, introducing himself to her. It didn’t take much to wonder if she would have ever fallen in love with him, not when that was a reality not nearly as far from this one as he might have suspected. 

But she knew from everything that had transpired today that he was gone. Those would only ever be memories. And as much as she was partially thankful to hear the words, to know that the flirting between them hadn’t been imagined, she also wished she hadn’t heard it at all. She wished he hadn’t chosen  _ this  _ day and moment between them to confess his attraction to her. Not when he wasn’t even human anymore. 

But could she have ever fallen in love with him? She knew the answer to that question, even with everything that had transpired.

“Yes,” she repeated, her voice cracking as unwanted tears stung in her eyes and her heart clenched in pain. 

And she pulled the lever on the vent switch.

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Happy Chopped! All of the fics have been posted and you can find the list of them [here](https://chopped100challenge.tumblr.com/post/632918927500083200/chopped-choice-horror-fics) on Chopped's Tumblr. Voting begins on Tuesday, October 27th at 12:00am EST and ends Friday, October 30th at 11:59pm EST. Definitely take a look at the others and happy spooky reading!
> 
>  **UPDATE:** Thanks for all of the love on this! Each of the comments have made my day on this! You can check out the accompanying gif set I made for this on my Tumblr [here](https://she-who-the-river-could-not-hold.tumblr.com/post/633519851781144576/imitation-a-memori-the-thing-1982-au-for). It was such a great round and make sure to read all of the other fics if you haven't had a chance yet!
> 
>  **where else you can find me:** [Tumblr](https://she-who-the-river-could-not-hold.tumblr.com/) | [Twitter](https://twitter.com/the_river_held) | [my carrd](https://she-who-the-river-could-not-hold.carrd.co/)


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